Yet another argument for refusing to designate some businesses as essential and letting the others collapse. The destruction wrought is far more devastating than the virus, by orders of magnitude, and the consequences of these collapses are vast and long-lasting.

The article:

More than 100,000 small businesses have permanently shuttered within just two months as pandemic lockdowns devastated the nation’s economy landing 36 million Americans out of work, according to a new survey this week.

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois, Harvard University, Harvard Business School and University of Chicago discovered at least 2 percent of the nation’s small businesses are now gone after conducting a representative survey of more than 5,800 enterprises between May 9-11.

“The broad conclusion of our research is that a lot of small businesses which make up a big share of U.S. employment have daily limited resources and are under a fair amount of financial distress,” said Illinois economist Alexander Bartik who co-authored the study.